Mustard Seeds and Manicured Lawns

Mark 4:26-34

[Jesus] also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.  And when the grain ripens he goes in at once, with his sickle, for the harvest has come.”

He also said, “With what can we compare the Kingdom of God or what parable can we use to describe it?  It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown in the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.  But when it grows, it becomes the largest of shrubs and it puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With these and many other parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it.  He didn’t speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything, in private, to his disciples.

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I bought an edger a week or so ago for my lawn partly because I have a couple of neighbors with perfect lawns. I don’t have the time or the energy or the desire, even, for the “perfect” lawn, really. But I guess I kind of like the challenge of trying to make the border where my grass meets the sidewalk look as neat and tidy as theirs does – like a highly piled, wall to wall carpet, with lines that look almost decorative – like the outfield of a major league baseball field, or like a freshly vacuumed living room rug.

My father and my wife are rolling their eyes right now. See, I will use that stupid edger, because I paid for it. And because I should probably keep the sidewalks in front of my house passable for dog walkers and bike riders and whatnot. But I really don’t think or care as much about my lawn as some people do – or as some people think that we all should. You know who you are.

For some of you, this might be the most controversial, offensive, upsetting thing I could say out loud in the house of the Lord, but here it goes: I’m inclined to believe there isn’t much more unnatural out there in the world than what we’ve been convinced to believe is the “perfect” suburban lawn.

If our lawns were supposed to look the way our Homeowner Associations and Home Depot and that madman down the street have tempted us to believe they should look (you know who you are – and some of us are just jealous about it) – it wouldn’t be so hard or so expensive or so time-consuming to keep them that way – with all of the water, the fertilizer, the weed-killers, the mowers and trimmers and leaf-blowers, and the gas and electricity it takes to run all of that machinery, I mean.

Which, oddly enough, brings me back to Jesus and his parable about the tiny mustard seed, that enormous shrub, all of those birds, and the Kingdom of God.

Sometimes we talk about the parable of the mustard seed, and about how God can take even the smallest of anything and use it for good; how God can turn the smallest acts of faith into giant instruments of grace; how God can grow even the smallest seed of belief into a full and living tree of faithfulness; how God can take even the least among us and turn them into something bigger than anything we might expect to accomplish on our own.

And those are all fair estimations about what this parable might mean. But I suspect, when Jesus met privately with his disciples, he might have had a little more to say about the mustard seed than the rest of the crowds might have been ready or able to hear, just yet.

See, the parables aren’t supposed to be so easy or obvious or as warm and fuzzy as we sometimes make them. Parables are also meant to teach us about seeing the world differently. Parables are meant to be a challenge to our understanding of things. Parables are meant to upset us, even, to make us uncomfortable, to up-end our expectations and to transform our world-view when we let that happen. I think that’s why Jesus told them to the masses – threw them out into the world, letting them land where they might – but only unpacked and explained them for the disciples and his closest followers, in private. I think Jesus knew that not everyone was ready for the whole enchilada, perhaps.

So, a theologian named John Dominic Crossan said this about the parable of the mustard seed:

The point … is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three or four feet, or even higher, it is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom was like: not like the mighty cedar[tree] of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, [more] like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses -- if you could control it.

(The Historical Jesus, pp. 278-279).

See, mustard seeds weren’t something the average farmer would necessarily want planted in his field, because they’re hard to manage. Once these pesky little seeds take root, they’re difficult to control and they would take over the wheat or the barley or whatever grain you were really trying to cultivate.

And not only that, but these giant shrubs attract birds. And in a parable Jesus tells just before what we heard this morning, birds are a nuisance. We don’t like birds, earlier in this same chapter, because they pick up the seeds the sower is trying to plant, and they gobble them up before they ever get a chance to grow. I don’t like birds because they’re creepy and crappy – literally, crappy – like, they make a tremendous mess when they gather en masse in the bushes just beyond my deck in the back yard.

So, you see, there’s nothing warm and fuzzy or easy about these parables when you read them differently. For 21st Century, middle-class, suburbanites, Jesus might as well have suggested that the Kingdom of God is like a patch of dandelions – a weed, a nuisance, something uncontrollable, something despised by others, something your neighbors might hate to see growing next door, something that would attract birds, perhaps – undesirables of some stripe – who are bound to make a mess of your good order, no matter what you do to tend it, to manage it, to control it, or to keep it for ourselves.

In other words, the Kingdom of God doesn’t always look the way we want it to look. It means there are weeds in the mix – saints and sinners are allowed and belong here. The Kingdom of God is a nuisance – God’s love asks things of us sometimes we’re not always comfortable with tolerating, let alone loving. The Kingdom of God and those God welcomes might be despised by others – what some would pluck up or mow over or zap with weed-b-gone, God tends to… God loves… God fertilizes, even… and lets grow in our midst until we learn to see them as worthy and beautiful and loveable, too. The Kingdom of God attracts birds – undesirables that we’re called to make room for, to feed, to tend to, to protect, even, with the shade of grace we proclaim so loudly and proudly for ourselves.

So let’s think of the mustard seed – and the invasive, obtrusive bush it produces – as more like a patch of dandelions in the middle of our carefully tended, perfectly edged, micro-managed front lawn that is the Church in the world. And let’s let it point to a doing away with control, maybe; an undoing of the rules, perhaps; a call to let the sinners mix with the saints; an acknowledgment that the mustard seeds and the dandelions are just as worthy and pretty as all the rest, if we can forget that someone ever taught us they were weeds in the first place.

Because what if we let those wild yellow weeds take over whatever perfectly tended lawns we’ve come to love and to cherish and to protect so carefully in the Church? What if we let go of what we thought the mission field of God’s Kingdom in the world would, could, or should look like, and really let those annoying birds of the air – the strangers, the outsiders, the sinners – come near, move in, make their home among us, and flourish, too?

That would take faith, wouldn’t it? That would take an ability to forget what the neighbors thought about our lawn? It would take a willingness to let God be God and to trust that if we just sow the seeds of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and peace – and mean it – that blessings will flow, that love will grow, that the Kingdom will come among us, that God’s will would be done – through us and for the sake of the world, in Jesus’ name.

Amen

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

Mark 3:20-35

 Then [Jesus] went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’

And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.  But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’ — for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’

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My working title for this sermon all week has been, “Crazy is as crazy does,” partly because there’s enough to unpack in all of these verses to make a preacher nuts, but mostly because of the actions of Jesus and the accusations against him for having lost his mind.

The nutshell of it all for me is that this is another moment in the life and times of Jesus when he’s under the microscope and under attack, even, for the ministry he’s begun. He’s being accused by the scribes – some of the leaders of the synagogues – which is a thing we hear often in Scripture. He’s being worried over by his family, which isn’t such popular Biblical theme. He’s being followed by overwhelming, overbearing crowds of people. And he’s trying to convince everyone that he hasn’t “gone out of his mind;” that he’s not crazy; that he isn’t possessed – at least not by the powers of Satan or Beelzebul, as some of them assume.

But Jesus is possessed, it seems – overcome with and inspired by the Holy Spirit, I mean. And that Holy Spirit – bestowed upon him through baptism – was moving Jesus to do some pretty surprising, shocking, out-of-the-ordinary, hard-to-swallow sorts of things. And people were taking notice. And people were suspicious. And they were afraid, some of them, and angry, some of them, and out of sorts about it all. So they assumed and accused and questioned and condemned all the things about Jesus that they couldn’t see or understand or wrap their heads or their hearts around. And they chalked it all up to “crazy.”

Because that’s how people are, too much of the time, isn’t it? We are suspicious of the odd-balls. We assume and accuse and question and condemn. Sometimes we simply dismiss those we don’t understand or who push us out of our “normal” or who move us away from what’s comfortable or familiar or safe. Sometimes, we even kill them. Which, of course, is where all of this got Jesus.

And it’s been that way ever since, really, for the oddballs… the movers and shakers… the envelope pushers. It happened to Stephen and to Paul and to Peter, too.

More recently, of course, I think about Mahatma Gandhi and Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr.

And since June is PRIDE month, I think about Harvey Milk and Marsha P. Johnson and Matthew Shepard, too.

Oddballs and eccentrics, each in their own right. Jesus freaks, some of them. Outsiders, others of them. Non-conformists, all. Rebels. Misfits. Trouble-makers, even. Their families and friends and neighbors might even have thought them to be their own kind of crazy, perhaps.

And when we take Jesus out of the stained-glass windows of our collective mind’s eye, he is all of those things, too – a trouble-making, non-conforming, rebellious kind of outsider. And today’s gospel reminds us that all of his preaching and teaching and healing was so revolutionary that it made people believe Jesus was crazy, that he had gone out of his mind. Even his family tried to stop him – either because they agreed maybe he really was losing his marbles, or because they were genuinely afraid for his safety, or their own. Others, like the scribes, thought he just might be the devil himself – or at least possessed by Beelzebul.

And it’s hard to blame them, really. Jesus was doing and saying some pretty amazing things which didn’t bode well for a lot of people – especially the ones in power – but good news that promised nothing but blessing and redemption and fullness of life for those who had, up until then, been persecuted, left out, sidelined, and worse. (The other oddballs, misfits, outcasts, and whatnot.) This Good News was crazy.

Last week, we heard Jesus promise that God loved the world – the whole world and nothing but the whole world – and that God sent Jesus into the midst of it all to save and redeem it. These disciples he’d gathered to follow him and to help with this ministry were nothing to write home about – Jesus loved oddballs and misfits, too, of course. Fishermen. Tax collectors. Women. All of them charged with helping the Kingdom of God come to pass. And people were being cured. Demons were being cast out. Sins were being forgiven. More misfits were being welcomed into the mix and lives were being changed by it all. It was crazy.

Because what makes “crazy” “crazy,” is that it doesn’t line up with what people expect, with what people are used to, with what people think they want or need in their lives. So Jesus meets all of the criteria on the report card for crazy. He is just exactly what the scribes and other religious leaders weren’t looking for in a Messiah – this peacemaker; this forgiver of sins; this living, moving, breathing force of mercy, love, and grace in their midst.

So, if Jesus was crazy by the world’s standards, it makes a wannabe follower of his wonder what all of that might have to do with you and me?

Well, I think the answer is in that bit at the end of today’s Gospel, when Jesus says, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And then, looking at the knuckleheads surrounding him, he answers his own question: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

So, I think what makes us brothers and sisters to Jesus is when we’re just as inspired by, just as overwhelmed with, just as possessed by the Holy Spirit – just as “crazy” as Jesus, if you will, because of the grace we’ve received and by our willingness to share it at all costs. And crazy is as crazy does.

So, what if we spent more time – as children of God, as followers of Jesus – trying to be crazy by the world’s standards, instead of conforming to what the world or the Church, even, thinks we should do or be or look like? For the record, I don’t think it always has to be big, off-the-charts, headline or history-making levels of crazy.

I think crazy might look like bending over backwards to be as safe as possible over the course of the last year of this pandemic, in order to love our neighbor and to protect the vulnerable – at times when others would not, and in ways that may not have always made sense. 

I think crazy would mean giving more money and resources away for the sake of others and our ministry – to the point that people would think we were nuts.

I think crazy would mean we’d let more people in – so that the line for communion on Sunday morning would make guests wonder if they were in church, or at the bar; in prison or at the hospital; in the middle of a pride parade, a homeless shelter, or the United Nations.

I think it would mean we’d forgive more readily – so that enemies and grudges wouldn’t steal one more moment of our energy, one more ounce of our soul, one more second of our precious time.

I think it would mean we’d stop fighting about things the politicians and cable news networks inspire us to fight about. And I think, instead, we would start fighting against and worrying about extreme poverty, violence against women and children, systemic racism, consumerism, and the rate at which people die every day, all over the world, of preventable, treatable diseases or from lack of clean water.

I think crazy would look like the Kingdom of God happening among us, the Kingdom of God happening through us, the Kingdom of God happening for us, and for the sake of the world.

And I think that would just be crazy – in every holy, wonderful, faithful, gracious way we can’t always imagine; but crazy in ways that only God can accomplish – through the likes of oddballs and misfits like you and me – when we muster the kind of humility, courage, and faith to let it happen.

Amen